Inco Flash Furnace Froth Column Modifications

In the early 1990?s, Inco successfully installed two new flash furnaces as part of their SO2abatement project to reduce SO2 emissions from the Copper Cliff Smelter by 60%. The flash furnace off-gas is cooled and cleaned through two new Monsanto Dynawave gas cleaning systems that replaced the traditional venturi scrubbing system. It was discovered that the flash furnace production capacity is often limited by the capacity of the gas cleaning system. The key task is to eliminate pressure drop from the system. The froth column is responsible for by far the largest pressure drop in the gas cleaning system. Initially, the column was fitted with 22 plates. In 1994, both #1 and #2 froth columns were modified by reducing the number of plates in each column from 22 to 18 and increasing the interplate spacing on lower plates. With increasing demand for more throughput in the flash furnaces, further modifications on the froth columns were made in 2005. This paper describes these modifications and results together with some fundamental analysis of the froth column characteristics.